If you can, look into local jewelers who can craft you something handmade with ethically sourced stones. I’m in Seattle and we have Valerie Madison who does great engagement sets and Everling Jewelry who uses recycled metals. A local artist will be able to recommend something within your budget, and your SO can and should be involved, as another poster mentioned.
Ugh yes, nailed it!
Thank you for posting, I never really pursued this but just downloaded Airalo for an upcoming trip and I’m really excited to not pay $10/day with my carrier!!!
No, I’m not referencing my original comment. I meant I drafted a detailed response to the water/arable land/invasives complaint about the entire cut flower industry, and all the orgs/lobbying efforts re: farmland and ag policy we are working on to change it, but deleted it.
I wrote out a long comment, but there are loads of people trying to change this industry for the better. 78% of all flowers in the US are imported and it’s a huge problem. I hope you’re able to always buy locally grown flowers from small farms like we do. (Many of whom also grow vegetables.) In our area, housing developers buying up arable farmland are the biggest challenge to small scale farms.
It’s fine to not read a whole comment, but there is still plenty of demand from people with money. Can you tell me more about why you believe the wedding industry is predatory?
Your resident lemmy wedding florist checking in!
Cheers to all of you who are excited about the deaths of small businesses just because you…don’t like the way other people get married, lol? Do you think artists should be paid, or not?
I, too, got married when I was a broke grad student and couldn’t afford the wedding I wanted. We didn’t go in debt for it! In big cities, there are a lot more wealthy people than y’all realize who are happy to pay people like me to make art. Business is down but still fine for us.
Anyway, what most people don’t realize is that certain wedding vendors have super low overhead costs, so they are mostly paying for labor. Your DJs, wedding planners, and photographers can afford to charge $3k/wedding and still pay themselves. Meanwhile, florists are spending $1-4k at wholesale for a typical wedding, before we even touch your flowers or get any pay for our time. I think we probably have the highest COGs outside of venues. Catering, cakes, and to some extent rental companies are all in the same boat - we have to pay a lot to provide you with the physical goods we show up with, and we don’t make much.
I know everyone on Reddit and probably Lemmy thinks every wedding vendor is fleecing couples at all times. Or that the price goes up because “wedding.” It doesn’t. The price is what it is because it takes a LOT of labor and materials to create an entire event from scratch. And because it’s seasonal/weird hour/weekend work, we have to pay our freelance teams really well to keep them coming back. (You think I can afford a salaried team year round?? Lol no.) I can’t think of a single colleague who inflates pricing between weddings vs. other kinds of events.
I only do $10k+ weddings, and you probably think I’m raking it in. But 75-80% of the cost of every wedding I do goes to someone else - paying my team $35/hr, paying local flower farmers fair wages for their products, buying vases or supplies, my web hosting and professional fees, insurance, etc. I still only take home A QUARTER of what my spouse does in a good year. We live in an expensive city, and I could make a lot more money doing something else, but I love what I do.
I hope this helps y’all understand at least the wedding floral business a bit better. We aren’t getting rich off weddings, there is no wedding tax, and wholesale flowers are expensive AF before we do anything with them. I can’t speak for all vendors, maybe there are unscrupulous ones out there, but most are just small businesses trying to do something we love for a living. And I don’t really understand the online hate when people are in my inbox every day asking me about their wedding date.
This headline is bogus; the comparison to Brexit makes no sense here. Brexit was voted on in a democratic process (for better or worse), but all of these countries currently have junta governments that were not elected, and were suspended by ECOWAS because of it. Now they are unilaterally “choosing” to leave ECOWAS, but truthfully, ECOWAS considers them illegitimate and has considered military action (though done very little). It will be interesting to see if the threat of leaving finally prompts some collective action or not.
Ugh, yes. The joys of small businesses, alongside the rare spam call about “funding.” Thankfully these emails all go to my spam filter now! But it is super annoying.
Oh, that’s so great that the dog is trained to signal to go out. I hope it’s an easier time for you, too! Best of luck!
We were just thrust into this scenario with an elderly family member, and now we have a cute senior dog. It’s going okay, but it’s been an adjustment.
First, get vet records and/or go ahead and establish care at a vet. Vets are extremely busy after everyone adopted pets during COVID - so better to go now, and make sure pup is doing okay.
Second, you’ll need the basics immediately - food, bowls, leash, collar, bags, etc. Hopefully your situation is easier and your friend can pass that stuff along.
You’ll also need to figure out potty timing. Dogs love being on a schedule. I don’t. So it may be a big adjustment to not sleep in, and to go for 5 walks a day at the same time every day. But congrats, that’s what you’re signing up for. Our dog is also a tiny breed and was never trained properly, so we are getting up at 4:30am to avoid accidents in the house. Does it suck? 100%. But we are still learning how long he can hold it overnight without an accident. We’re up to 5 hours now and we increase it a little bit each night. There may be a learning curve for you too.
Lastly, we also have an elderly cat and he’s fine as long as the dog stays ~3 feet away. The dog is terrified of him, so it’s usually fine. If he does get close, the cat hisses and growls so they mostly have a détente. I do keep any eye out on eating time, because the dog is scared to eat if the cat is like 3 feet away staring him down. We’ve also tried hard to make sure they get equal attention and love. Still, the cat isn’t thrilled about having all this hyperactive little brother energy around. We’re all just doing our best!
I think others have covered the economies of scale and niche products creating the disparity.
But I wanted to suggest that if your grandpa is regularly eating gluten free bread, we have found that making it at home is SO much more affordable than buying a loaf at the store. (Even though gluten free flour is also more expensive.) Most of the gluten free flours have their own sandwich bread recipe, either on the bag or their website. I don’t know what flours you have access to, but they can be wildly different blends, so using their tested recipes is always best.
We’ve mastered our favorite so it takes only 15 minutes of “work” and then just time in the oven. It’s also much better than store bought! I don’t know if that’s possible for you, but it could be a lovely weekly ritual for you and your grandpa.
Also, to anyone suggesting we just eat rice and beans, I’m an old celiac. We went without bread, pasta, cake, pastries, cookies, brownies, pizza, and crackers before these products came to market. These are mostly “fun” foods that I don’t eat regularly, but usually pop up in social situations. Do you know how many sad birthdays with no cake we’ve had? How often we’ve watched our friends and family eat things we could never have? I am so grateful to the “fad” gluten free people who made it possible to have culturally/socially important foods we were missing out on for decades!!